Mercy
by WTFWonder
Summary: Her brother ails under the bond where she only squirms. Some leniency is long overdue.


**Mercy**

By Someone with Time on Their Hands

Summary: Her brother ails under the bond where she only squirms. Some leniency is long overdue.

The bond had always been with them. Even in infancy they would roll to cling to each other in their bassinet. When it came time for separate rooms it took Nuada half a century before he grew out of breaking into his twin's room to climb into bed with her. After that phase passed he couldn't resist a nightly visit to watch her sleep and brush hair from her cheek. She would pretend to slumber as he did this and would never touch on the subject during the day. Nuala would shut her thoughts away whenever he sat hip to hip with her or embraced her a second longer than was natural for a brother to hold his sister.

There was a constant flux in her—two levels of understanding crashing against each other. One level understood that they were closer than any pair of siblings had been or ever would be with their minds able to slosh into each other, rendering conventional banter all but superfluous. The other level knew that for all their mental chemistry and otherworldly symbiosis, Nuada was straining its set boundaries. Her set boundaries. When they left the palace grounds, her twin was all but swamped with women that he waltzed through as if he were a dog in a sea of cats in heat. The same principle held true with her in the beginning. Every testosterone carrier in a three mile radius took her shyness as accepting their courtship. She endured them for a grand total of a month before the suitors began to drift away, often sporting mysterious new scars, bruises and lacks of limbs as they did. Nuala was irate at these "accidents" and their instigator, but only grew fearful when the boy in green came along. A young Elfish creature that looked more human than Fae with pointed ears, a leafy tunic and an impish smile. She'd never learned his name and yet she'd spent a sunny afternoon talking with him under a tree, ending with a salute of his cap and a flower in her hair.

The princess had bottled the memory up for the better part of a week before the prince none-too-discreetly planted his palm on her temple and scooped the recollection into his skull. His smile at the time wilted into a cold, dark slit in his face. He'd vanished for a day and returned in a placid air, rolling an evergreen leaf between his fingers. It was then that she realized how adamant her brother was about their bond and how consuming it was for him. He refused his suitors and expected her to do the same, whether he had to help it along or not. And if she dared to enjoy the company of a male that wasn't him… Nuala's skin shrank at the thought and had the Fae boy's flower pressed and hidden in one of her hundreds of books. Either he was kind enough to let her keep it or he'd grown weary of rifling through every tome for the thing.

Still.

He restrained himself and masked his smothering as brotherly worry before their father. Nuada called her "Sister" almost as often as she called him by "Brother," only whispering "Nuala" when he was at his weakest. For all his embracing and all the turmoil burning in his skull and loins, he never kissed her, not even on her brow or cheek. He never pleasured himself or tried to pour his scarlet thoughts into her for all his painful wanting. Until one spring day. Nuala had gone to a pristine lake and stripped down to her pearl skin, diving and breaching in solitude. Unfortunately for them both, Nuada had been sent to collect her by their father. He saw her wet, chilled and nude in the center of the blue. Her only shred of modesty was granted by the hair plastered over her breasts and the water's glare shielding the space below her navel. In that one mortifying second they realized the state of the other and yelped.

Nuada lost his infamous poise and stumbled back with both hands on his eyes. Nuala ducked into the water up to her chin as she kicked her way to shore. The prince managed to stammer out an apology and their father's summons. Nuala nodded and waited in the lake until her brother had flitted away. Not that the formality mattered. The image was cemented in her brother's mind and wouldn't fade even if he wanted it to. Which he didn't. As she dried and dressed herself she felt her vertex throb in synch with his in happy pain. It was a thousand times more scalding than previous urges brought on by Nuada's imagination and Nuala felt herself buckling under the nauseous pressure of it. Her fingers fumbled with her waist wrap twice before binding it right, every part of her cringing and waiting for the prince to finally relieve himself under this fresh, perverse pain. How could he not? As her shaking hands smoothed her gown she tried to convince herself and her mentally eavesdropping twin that she would not hate him when he did it.

The throb dulled slightly as she shuffled through the brush to the clearing Nuada waited in, but… But he was not soothing himself. There was a bright sting in her hips as she realized he was driving his nails into his own flesh there to mute the arousal. She reached the clearing and saw her brother with his back to her, head dipped. His hands were still on his hips. "…I am sorry, N-. …Sister."

Nuala gulped silently. "You are forgiven Brother."

"…"

"…"

"Did Father give you a hint as to what he needed us for?" Relieved to be on a different track, however superficial, his shoulders went lax.

"Some trifle about traveling to the Goblin Kingdom in hopes of an alliance or some other nonsense." He dropped a shaky laugh. "That King Jareth is as loopy as he is powerful. Father need only offer him some shiny bauble and he's as good as united." The twins giggled honestly for the first time since childhood. It ebbed off weakly and Nuala came further into the open space. Nuada turned at a profile but didn't face her. He held out his palm. "Let's go." Nuala said nothing and let her hand be swallowed by his. They teleported to the throne room of Bethmoora and King Balor immediately noticed the solemnity drenching them both. That and his daughter's still-sodden hair. Unconsciously his wizened eyes traveled warily to his son.

"What happened?" Nuada opened his mouth but was cut off by his twin. She pulled her hand away from his and pressed it to her chest.

"I was washing my hair when he came upon me Father, I—I saw a felled unicorn foal on the opposite shore before he reached me." She bowed her head appropriately. "…It was disheartening to say the least," she whispered. A suspecting moment passed before condolences were shared and business was attended to. They would be traveling to the Goblin Kingdom and negotiating alliances with the eccentric prat of a king next week and so on and so forth. The minute the discussion ended the siblings parted ways for their rooms, leaving a grim father to massage his temple in worry.

An hour passed in which Nuala skimmed feverishly through her books, organized and re-organized her wardrobe and pretended to think of new stanzas for her current poem. Her nether region was still sore and drew her concentration away from whatever she tried to funnel it into. "Oh Brother…" She pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes. "Oh Brother, why must you love me in such ways—in too many ways for a brother to love his sister? Why?"

"You know why, Nuala." The princess gasped and whirled around to see her twin looming over her, dark-rimmed eyes somber and begging and angry. He had dropped "Sister." "You've known why as well as I have ever since the innocence of our youth eroded into adolescence." She looked away as his hand traced the side of her forehead. "Because of our bond. Eternal, unbreakable and undeniable." He breathed the last word as his thin mouth stopped a hair away from her face. Nuala bowed her head away from him.

"I doubt our bond is what prompts you to keep breaching the barrier between us as siblings." Nuada halted her with a hand on her shoulder, the digits holding like a manacle.

"Not as siblings, Nuala, as one being broken in half. As a split person needing to lock back together as best they can." Nuala felt everything in her shrink into a pit at the lunatic glow to his eyes. "_That_ is what our bond is born of, dear Nuala. Emotionally you are a hundredfold stronger than I, and for all these centuries you have been able to squelch the urges I have failed to." He had the decency to glance ashamedly to the side. "Urges I didn't really want to ignore." His gaze shot back to her twice as searing as the pang in their vertexes. "But do not even hint at the idea that I have breached in any way that is unexpected! I have reigned myself in as best I could and that scene today was the only thing that has ever brought me to the edge of that discipline. But I held on, Nuala. I held and continue to hold because I don't want to disgust you anymore than I already have." At last his indignation crumbled away to the fuel powering it: his frustration. Miserable, confused frustration that boiled out of him like a stink and it glazed his eyes and cracked his voice like a child's.

Even without their link Nuala's heart would have quivered and broke with his as he shook and planted his other hand on the opposite shoulder for support as much as for closeness. She gingerly touched her palms to his back and at once the princess was jerked forward, hard, lithe arms latching into her. Nuada continued to tremble as wet drops stained the back of her dress and Nuala stroked his hair as their mother once did. "I do want—n-need you in too many ways, my poor Sister. If I could whittle this bond down to the barest thread I would and have at least you rid of this pain. But until I find that miracle I am stuck. I cannot abstain myself from wanting you or lashing out when I see you with another just as I cannot become so devious as to pleasure myself or force you to reciprocate. So--," he pushed his mouth to her ear, "—I am stuck." A new warm drop hit the point of her ear. "And I am sorry." His arms finally softened and slipped away from her as he turned to his twin's bed and flopped onto its edge in a slouch. Nuala's hands hung at her side, the fever below her stomach finally fading into calm.

She didn't notice. All she could see were the glass streaks splitting her brother's face. The great Prince Nuada, Silverlance, crying like an infant and looking impossibly old and gaunt on her lavish bed. His confession had left him winded and her shattered. Did she lust for her brother? No. Could she ever force her legs to part for him? Never. Did she love him? Absolutely. Her brother was boiling from the inside out and couldn't bring himself douse it because of her.

This would not do.

Nuala sat at Nuada's hip and mimicked his trait of tracing her sibling's brow. "Nuada." His head perked up at his name on her lips. She moved her hand to his chin and craned him to look at her. In her mind Nuala tried to imagine this warrior prince wasn't her brother. She tried to see him in the priest robes of other Elves, or glamoured goblin, even the wily face of the Fae boy flitted over Nuada's sunken cheeks. They all evaporated into pointlessness. What she was doing wasn't for any dreamed up male or for her to feel as gratified as her receiver.

His head drooped obligingly towards hers.

This was for her brother who had ailed under a longing he had no true grasp on.

She parted her arched red lips only a bit while he spread his enough to bare teeth.

This was to relieve him in a way the conventional method never could, due to missing reciprocation.

They closed their eyes and she felt his hand pet the back of her head.

This was a pressure release that she half-expected would need administering again in the future.

Their lips fit over each other warmly and perfectly. Locking together.

This was mercy.


End file.
